Knowledge Mapping on Nepal’s Protected Areas Using CiteSpace and VOSviewer

Liang Chang, Teiji Watanabe, Hanlin Xu and Jiho Han
Additional contact information
Liang Chang: Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan
Teiji Watanabe: Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan
Hanlin Xu: College of Tourism, Rikkyo University, Niiza Campus, 1-2-26 Kitano, Niiza-shi 352-8558, Japan
Jiho Han: College of Tourism, Rikkyo University, Niiza Campus, 1-2-26 Kitano, Niiza-shi 352-8558, Japan

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 7, 1-23

Abstract: Protected areas (PAs) play a vital role in environmental conservation, particularly in Asian countries. Numerous studies were conducted on PAs in Nepal. We analyzed 864 papers from the Web of Science database using two visualization tools: VOSviewer and CiteSpace. This study identified the most influential journals, institutions, countries, and regions. In addition, we investigated the changing trend of research hotspots on PAs in Nepal. Keyword mapping was conducted for each type of PA and their differences were compared. We found that the research hotspots are changing with the shifting of conservation policies in Nepal. We suggest conducting more predictive studies on the future development of PAs. Currently, PA research is mainly conducted in traditional disciplines, but with the impact of climate change and the consequent increase in its negative impacts, academic contributions from other disciplines are expected to increase much more. We found that there was a shift in research power in countries and regions. We also detected an imbalanced distribution in which “protected areas” and “national parks” have been studied the most. Only 12 publications were about the hunting reserve, despite its importance to snow leopard conservation and economic significance to the buffer zone communities.

Keywords: knowledge mapping; bibliometrics; VOSviewer; CiteSpace; protected areas; Nepal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/7/1109/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/7/1109/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:7:p:1109-:d:866632

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().